NOW THAT’S A WATER FEATURE!
Desperate to cool off at home? There’s a host of pop-up pools to choose from — and as this dad found, thanks to a simple trick you can swim in them for miles
AS MY daughter Martha powers through the water, I’m not even sure if she can hear me. But like any experienced parent, I’ve learned that if you can’t lead by example then the next best option is to bluff it. And to do so at volume.
‘Head still,’ I shout. ‘ Kick from the hips. That’s it. Keep going.’
With pools still closed, and our home miles from any handy lakes or seaside resorts where we could cool off during the sweltering temperatures, the last thing I thought I’d be doing would be taking my tenyear-old swimming.
But having exhausted all the other physical activities over the past 14 weeks, it feels long overdue.
Before coronavirus struck, Martha swam with a local club four times a week, with weekend galas and time trials on top. She loves it and, after three months of lockdown living, it’s clear it’s something she’s really missing.
While her club has been great at providing her with a landbased training schedule to help maintain her fitness, it’s the water she really longs for. So what to do? Well, if she can’t go to the swimming pool, then the swimming pool must come to her.
My wife Charlotte suggests it might be a ‘fun family project’ to dig and build a pool of our own. I look at her in disbelief.
The five of us – we have three daughters — can’t agree what to watch on television, let alone pull off a major construction project. Getting the eldest to paint the garage doors — an hour a day over eight days — prompted a complaint that she’d be ‘better off on a zero-hours contract’. Plus, it doesn’t seem like the smartest time to blow £20,000odd on a DIY project. Leave it with me, I tell her.
A week later, on what has proved to be the hottest day of the year, I’m in the garden supervising Martha’s first training session in months.
Admittedly, the pool isn’t exactly Olympic- sized. Purchased for £600 online, it took two hours to put up and 15 hours to fill using a garden hose. At just over four metres in length, if Martha were to attempt to swim lengths in it she’d spend more time tumbleturning at each end than actually swimming.
But that’s not the plan. Taking inspiration from the online antics of swimming coach Jennie Jones, from Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, I have created what she calls an ‘endless pool’.
The secret ingredient? A four-metre length of stretchy elastic. One end is strapped around the waist or ankle of the swimmer and the other tethered to something outside the pool.
They then get in and swim as normal. The resistance offered by the elastic — which varies according to the thickness — means that however hard they swim they will remain stationary. Pretty basic but it works.
Having bought a purposemade Velcro-fastened belt and length of elastic from eBay for £25, I strap the belt around Martha’s waist and send her into the pool. I’m standing on the grass at one end holding on to the elastic and, as she starts to swim away from me, it stretches until it will stretch no more.
(Of course, if you were swimming on your own, the elastic could be fixed to the frame of the pool or another immovable object like your fence.)
Uninhibited by the leash, Martha goes through her repertoire of strokes — crawl, breast, back and butterfly.
‘It’s just the same as normal swimming,’ she says, pausing for a breather after five minutes’ hard slog.
Determined to give it a go myself, we swap places. And she’s right. The resistance from the band is subtle — at no point do I feel in danger of being catapulted out of the pool if I were to miss a stroke. And it doesn’t impede my arms or legs. In the end, the only thing that makes me stop is my lack of fitness.
So we swap again and, as Martha adjusts her goggles, I set her a challenge — manage to reach the end and I’ll build her that real pool. As long as the elastic doesn’t snap before swimming pools are predicted to re- open next month, I’m pretty sure I’m safe.